


Full Stop

by trufflemores_Glee_fic



Category: Glee
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-07
Packaged: 2018-11-29 00:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11429340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores_Glee_fic/pseuds/trufflemores_Glee_fic
Summary: 4.18.  It's 10:27 AM when the first shot goes off.





	Full Stop

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, everybody! After receiving multiple requests to repost my old Glee fics, I have created a second AO3 account to do so. I hope you can forgive me for flooding the Glee pages over the next few days. 
> 
> I also ask for kindness regarding the quality of these fics. Over on my main AO3 account (trufflemores), I have written over 150 Flash fics; end result, my current work is of a higher quality than these older pieces. But I know how beloved old fics can be, and I respect that something I consider sub-par can be someone else's favorite. 
> 
> So I hope you enjoy this fic and any others you choose to read. If you choose to do so, I would also be happy to have you on board 'The Flash' bandwagon as well.
> 
> Kick back, relax, and enjoy. You have been one of the greatest audiences I have ever had.
> 
> Affectionately yours,  
> trufflemores

It's 10:27 AM when the first gunshot goes off.

At first, no one knows what to do.  No one moves; no one breathes.  Mr. Schuester opens his mouth, but even he lacks the words to describe the tick-tock-full-stop sensation building in all of their chests, a cloying, tangible crackle in the room that slowly, precipitously builds-builds-builds.

The next shot is pure electricity.  Everyone is on their feet before anyone has time to say a word, and Mr. Schuester is speaking now, choreographing their panic, and someone shuts the windows, and someone locks the doors, and someone thrusts the piano against the wall.

And then tick-tock, full-stop.  The silence begins.

Ryder is huddled in a corner, Jake on his other side, Marley caught between them.  Kitty sits hunched across from them, Unique wide-eyed and dazed at her side.  Artie and Blaine are tucked in one corner together, and Sam sits a little ways away, an island in himself.

The silence is deafening as Mr. Schuester speaks.  No one has the heart to tell him to be quiet.  No one has the will power to resist the entreaty to call their family, their friends, anyone they know, to tell them what is happening.

They need to be heard.  If only for a last time, they need-need-need to be heard.

Tick-tock.  Full-stop.  The metronome keeps time for them.  It has no life to give; it has nothing to lose.

When life is the ante, ignorance is bliss.

* * *

As Blaine curls in on himself, the ringing in his ears starts.  He barely registers the commotion around him: the harsh, ragged breaths, too loud in the silence; the soft sobs and suppressed sniffs; the patter of clumsy fingers across crunched keyboards.  He's so desperate to escape that he pushes it away, curls in on himself, becoming an island amid a sea of turmoil.  He offers no one comfort and no advice.  He has nothing to say, and his own breath is becoming loud in the silence, so loud, so, so loud.

He thinks about pulling his own phone out.  Kurt will be in class, but they have promises to each other, and Kurt might respond, and then Blaine might be able to breathe normally again.  He's broken promises to Kurt before, and Kurt's broken promises to him, but perhaps now is the time to say that he'll never hold those broken promises against him, that he'll do anything to mend the ones that he's broken to Kurt.

Hush, hush.  Blood-rush.  His head feels heavy on his shoulders, and the ache behind his eyes is real, because he's not crying, he can't cry, and he can't cheapen everything that Kurt and he are by trying to reconcile now.  He knows what they are - ex-boyfriends, former lovers, strangers masquerading as friends - but he can't bring himself to accept it.

So he listens to the silence instead.  He listens to the not-silence, the pounding of his own heart mirrored by pounding footsteps and oh God oh God oh God.

A door slams in the distance, and Blaine lets out a small, choked noise.

He doesn't want to die.

* * *

He's almost woozy with terror.  It's an all-encompassing sensation, as if the room is on fire and he doesn't know what to do other than sit and wait for the flames to consume him.  There's no exit, no alternative plan.  All he can do is sit and wait for the world to close in on him, to consume him or leave him untouched.

Marley is sobbing, Kitty's arms around her, and Blaine belatedly realizes that Kitty is sobbing, too.  They're crying so loudly that it makes his chest ache, and he can't speak, he can't breathe, but he can't ignore them, either.  He wants to call Kurt more than ever, because Kurt always, always knows what to do.  Kurt is a beacon of light even in the most oppressive darkness; Kurt is his sole anchor to the world.

He wants to call Kurt, but his fingers are stiff and unbending around his elbows, and he doesn't know what he would say.

(I'm sorry.  I'm sorry.  I'm so sorry, Kurt.)

He sniffs once silently.  No one notices.

In the quiet, the silence, Kitty's sobs are very, very loud.

Tick-tock.  Full-stop.

* * *

Emerging from thoughtlessness, Blaine feels almost dazed when a foot nudges his own.  And as soon as he meets Sam's eyes, the whites exposed in fear, he realizes with a gut-wrenching slip that Tina isn't there.  Tina.  Tina, Tina, Tina.

"Brittany's not here," Sam whispers.

Blaine swallows.  "Tina isn't here, either."

* * *

There's a white light shining in his face, and in spite of the earlier warnings, Blaine lifts his head and meets Artie's gaze, shielded partially behind his phone.

"Artie, what are you doing?" he whispers.

Artie swallows, visibly struggling to keep his composure.  Please, Blaine thinks, because he doesn't know what he's supposed to do if he loses it.  Kitty and Marley are no longer crying, and that's good, but he can't handle it if Artie starts crying.  

He got him out of the chair.  He got him onto the floor.  That was good, wasn't it?  That was good enough.  It had to be.

"If we don't make it out of here," Artie begins, making it more real, adding color and clarity and depth to the fear tearing through him, "someone needs to know."

Blaine doesn't ask what they need to know.  He doesn't want to know.

Instead he bows his head and waves his hand, and he knows it's childish and selfish and cruel, but he doesn't want his last words to be, I'm so scared.

So he lets the silence speak for him.  Ryder has enough to say.

After the others have spoken, Artie turns the camera on Sam, and Blaine can hear the scuffle play out behind the fragile cocoon of his own knees as he presses his forehead against him.

There's a click, a soft sigh, and then silence.

* * *

"I'm going after her." 

"What?"

It's all Blaine has time for because Sam's on his feet, then, and so is Mr. Schuester and Coach Beiste and they're yelling, why are they yelling, why, why, why, why - 

He covers his ears and hunches down more to keep his own screams inward.

He rocks slowly, back and forth, back and forth, chanting a singular prayer to himself to keep himself sane: It's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

It's not okay.  Blaine wonders if it will ever be okay again.

Sam's crying, now, and it hurts to listen to.  It's sharp and ugly and real.  It's panic and fear and loneliness all condensed into a single violent emotion that bursts out of him without abandon.

"It's okay, Sam," Coach Beiste says, from somewhere far above, and far away.

Hush, hush.

The blood rush is welcome.

* * *

When the white out has abated and the world resolves itself into recognizable shapes, Blaine knows that Sam is gone.  When he looks up, Mr. Schuester is missing as well.

He doesn't know how he feels about it.

He doesn't know how he could feel about it, if Kurt was here and Kurt was missing.

Kurt.  Kurt, Kurt, Kurt.  It's a mantra in his mind, a whispered prayer, a plea, a promise, and a confession rolled into one.

He will do anything, anything to live long enough for Kurt to forgive him.  He will do anything to make himself worthy of forgiveness.  He will do anything to live, and if the sole reason for his existence becomes repairing the damage that he has done to Kurt's heart, then he will gladly surrender himself to it.

Kurt, he thinks.

And as the seconds tick on, it is the only thought keeping him still.  It is the only quiet, the only calm.

* * *

Brzzz.  Brzzz.  Brzzz.

Someone's phone is ringing.

The noise draws him from an almost Zen-like stupor as he stares with growing horror at the space around them.

Brzzz.  Brzzz.  Brzzz.

Killers have sensitive ears.  They must, to be so acutely in tuned to their victims that they pass unnoticed in the hallways and fire into their unsuspecting midst.  They must know the flinch that separates stillness from life.

Someone will hear it.

And with each subsequent vibration, Blaine can hear the footsteps growing louder.  "Turn it off," he hisses.  When no one responds, his voice cracks, becoming a plea as he insists, "Turn it off.  Please."

The phone silences of its own accord.  Blaine doesn't know whether to scream or cry at them for setting it off in the first place.

He does neither.

* * *

When the door opens a second time, Blaine's entire body goes rigid.

He waits, baited breath, unable to move, unable to breathe.  He waits long after the door has shut again and the hurried footsteps have faded.  He waits and waits and waits until the white noise in his ears subsides and feeling returns to his fingers, and only then does he allow his fingers to flex around his knees, gripping them tighter, and remember how to breathe.

They're alive.  They're all alive.

Tina, he thinks briefly, and he doesn't know how to feel, doesn't know what to do, because the thought of any, any of them being dea--

He swallows back bile.

Sparing a single look at the choir room around him, he very deliberately lowers his head to his knees, curls his arms around them both, and shuts out the world.

* * *

10:55.  

10:56.

10:57.

"All clear!"

A strangled sound shudders out of him at the first echoing cry.  Upon the second, he realizes that he is shaking, trembling all over and utterly unable to stop.  He doesn't try to, listening to the All clears! in the hallway and wondering if it's possible to die from sheer relief.

He chokes on it, then, his grief, his relief, as he struggles to his feet.  As the sobs threaten to break him down, he doesn't know what to do, latching onto the first person that he can find and sobbing without restraint.

_I'm alive.  I'm alive.  I'm alive._

It swarms him, a dizzying rush of vitality so enormous that he can't contain it, his fear crushing his ecstasy into a sort of muted, overwhelming joy.

He sobs and sobs and sobs, and when he can no longer cry he picks up his phone and holds it to his ear.  His mother picks up on the second ring.

"Hi, mom," he says, burying a hand in his hair.  "I need--"

He doesn't get the words out, then, because the tears are blurring his vision and he can't breathe, but she must understand him because she's already on her way.

Tick, tock.  Tick.  Tock.

Mr. Schuester puts a hand on the metronome and, at last, it full-stops.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. Please let me know if there are any weird coding errors in the fic! I did my best to weed them out before publication, but some will inevitably slip through the cracks.


End file.
